NeverarGreat

Here’s the latest Star Destroyer Only attempt, this time incorporating some of David Bissig’s Finalizer model. Unfortunately the underside of the ship isn’t well-rendered, so I had to continue using the cutout on that section:

https://vimeo.com/199588360
Password: destroyer

@Sir Ridley: Feel free to use this for your Kylo shuttle version if you’d like. I will probably upload the full AVI soon 😃

It may not be necessary, but I thought some form of alien dialogue would help explain why he turns, other than the random distant shouts in the original. The Hosnian destruction leads to our expectation of that reaction in the original since we want him to turn and notice it, but not when that scene has been excised. We just assume he will look to the sky because we’ve watched that again and again in our edits, but for someone who is watching this for the first time, there may be some slight confusion.

NeverarGreat said:
…there could be some dialogue offscreen from the large brown alien, though he only has one line of dialogue in the film.

It looks like the TFA deleted scenes come to the rescue again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRFrY8NFfAQ
Thanks to ImperialFighter for pointing it out!

How about a DOOM DRUM?

Nerevar carried Keening, a dagger made of the sound of the shadow of the moons. His champions were Dumac Dwarfking, who carried a hammer of divine mass, and Alandro Sul, who was the immortal son of Azura and wore the Wraith Mail. They met Lorkhan at the last battle of Red Mountain. Lorkhan had his Heart again, but he had long been from it, and he needed time. Wulfharth met Sul but could not strike him, and he fell from grievous wounds, but not before shouting Sul blind. Dagoth-Ur met Dumac and slew him, but not before Sunder struck his lord’s Heart. Nerevar turned away from Lorkhan and struck down Dagoth-Ur in rage, but he took a mortal wound from Lorkhan in turn. But Nerevar feigned the death that was coming early and so struck Lorkhan with surprise on his side. The Heart had been made solid by Sunder’s tuning blow and Keening could now cut it out. And it was cut out and Lorkhan was defeated and the whole ordeal was thought over.

-The Five Songs of King Wulfharth; The Secret Song of Wulfharth Ash-King; The Doom Drum

Kexikus said:

Why not just use “It’s the First Order. They found us.”?
I think that’s pretty much perfect since it explains what that Stardestroyer means (in case the audience doesn’t get it) and also continues their earlier discussion that the FO is probably able to track the Millenium Falcon.

That is probably the most natural statement for Finn to make, it just sounds a bit weird to me as it is implemented now. ‘It’s the First Order, they’ve fOUNd us!’ - with the middle part of ‘found’ sounding like it is slightly too highly pitched. Again, not a sound person, just noting what sounds weird to me.

^Agreed on all points. I think that the destroyed shuttle idea would be the best of the scenarios if done well, but it would probably be a great deal of work. For the destroyer alone idea, there could be some dialogue offscreen from the large brown alien, though he only has one line of dialogue in the film. It may be changed enough to make it work. I’ve also been thinking about the Finn dialogue change. He could say ‘The First Order, they’ve come’ using that word from his ‘come get it’ line at the end of the movie. Or if he ever says something approximating ‘they’ve tracked us’, that could be inserted where ‘It’s the Republic’ was originally, so no need to lip sync it, and the line makes a bit more sense: ‘They’ve tracked us! It’s the First Order, they’ve done it!’

I’m not particularly good with audio, so just some ideas for the experts here 😃

I jest. I don’t begrudge the shot its place in the movie, I just wish it made some more sense, continuity-wise. 😃

Here’s how I imagine the setup:

Kylo orders the attack force to approach the castle from a different direction, low over the trees to keep the element of surprise. The Finalizer is waiting above the clouds to make sure no ships escape. When the transport lifts off, Hux or Kylo decides to forego subtlety and make sure nothing escapes, and they blow it up. This involves emerging from the clouds and revealing themselves, but the assault force is already committed to their attack vector. The only thing that changes is that the castle patrons now know they can’t escape, but they still don’t know the attack is imminent, which is why they remain somewhat calm.

Pan down to a vast cityscape, focusing on a single 50’s era diner. . . .

Here’s a version with only the Star Destroyer emerging from the clouds:
https://vimeo.com/199518952
Password: destroyer

It would be awesome if the destroyer blows up a transport, so that Finn has a loud noise to react to and his line ‘they did it’ would make sense. I would bet that all we need is a transport taking off in the distance at the beginning of the panning shot where Rey is running from the castle - the one that begins on the castle and ends on the woods. We would only need to notice the ship taking off, and the destruction would happen offscreen, with Finn reacting to the noise and looking up. Then there would only need to be a cloud of debris for that shot. No need for TIE fighters, the shuttle, any of that.

Done and done.

I love seeing more of the Falcon, but I’m glad those shots got cut.

MalàStrana said:

Octorox said:

I’d also like for the edit to keep the “Apocalypse Now” shot if possible…

Yes please, it’s the best shot of an entirely different movie!

FTFY

About the 3D work, there is a blog I frequent that has a lot of 3D models of Star Wars ships and vehicles, perhaps that guy would have something we could use, or that he would be willing to make. It’s worth a shot anyway.

http://deeplyobsessed.blogspot.com/2015/08/force-awakens-star-destroyer.html

There were two bits of video of the shuttle flying away from the battle, and I just reversed those videos and color-shifted the engines to appear more like the front of the ship. So I used video of the shuttle with a luma key to remove the sky. If someone wants to do a 3D version or something, they are more than welcome, but I don’t know if that would be necessary if the shuttle is as far away as continuity suggests.

A problem with any of these ideas (TIE attack or shuttle) is something that Sir Ridley has said - it’s not very JJ Abrams to have a shot of something slow moving and far away in the sky, so whenever I tried that with the shuttle it didn’t look like the style of TFA, which is why it moves so fast.

Awesome! So glad to finally find some sort of solution. 😃

JEDIT: Here’s close-to-final sequence, from the launch of the shuttle to landing:
https://vimeo.com/199415784
Password: kylo
And here’s the uncompressed avi of the final sequence with a few more tweaks to the movement of the shuttle:
https://mega.nz/#!nM9ACJ7L!FREhN8pIrmzOy6y9u6Hr1PzpzIRi0J4dJjzRmk6mIqo

I just used the original movie edits, so obviously it will need dubbing at the very least. Beyond that though, cuts are really subjective. I suppose the Apocalypse Now TIEs can go, but ‘Those beasts!’ sounds about right considering the surprise attack.

What do you think? Should Kylo have a TIE escort, or is he more brazen than that?

IVed!

Here’s the shuttle version without the TIE fighter escort. I think it will need the TIEs in the final version.

https://vimeo.com/199369649
Password: kylo

I went ahead and cleaned up the laser a bit more as well as giving the Finalizer some movement.

Lord Haseo said:

NeverarGreat said:
double-bladed lightsaber or a bunch of Jedis fighting at once

There’s nothing wrong with either of these things. Admittedly the latter seems cheap but I think that’s due to:

1. Them wiping out inconsequential hostiles

2. Lack of an emotional connection towards the Jedi Order

rather than the idea itself.

Well the first one seems like it would end with the wielder getting cut in half, and both sound like a 12 year old’s idea of what is cool with Force users. Although, if Phil Lord and Christopher Miller had to put those things on screen, they would probably find a way to make it look brilliant.

Sir Ridley said:
Perhaps NeverarGreat could make a mock up of the idea with Kylo’s shuttle?

All right I’ll give it a try…

😉

I don’t mean to disparage your edits by the way, I think they are quite effective. However, I came to realize that your edits and my previous ideas would probably not be in the spirit of the project - changing as little as possible to facilitate the moved Starkiller firing.

^Noice. All the envys.

Yeah, I feel like this might work better than the recut scene simply because it conforms to people’s memories of the scene (How’s that for an about face?). When I showed it to my friends, the cuts were so subtle that they didn’t even realize at first that the Hosnian Destruction had been removed. the more that this scene is changed, the greater the chance that people will notice and be removed from the flow of the film, simply because it’s different than the theatrical presentation.

Kexikus said:

Sir Ridley said:

Things are moving forward! Here’s a new clip with all the good bits, from Rey leaving the castle and until her return.

Change list:
• Intercutting à la DominicCobb (new)
• Updated score without repeating parts (new)
• Better sound mix (new)
• “They’ve found us”
• No sunset TIEs
• My unnecessary wipe removed (new)
• Finn takes the lightsaber from Maz quicker
• “Those beasts” cut, “they’re here” left in

https://youtu.be/AWP1FJQyF6A

I have to admit that I don’t like the new intercutting. For me the scene worked better with the original cut. Everything else you did is fantastic though.

@NeverarGreat:
This could work. It would however create some continuity problems since Kylo’s shuttle arrives after the TIEs so it wouldn’t make sense to be the first ship to leave the Finalizer.
Also I don’t see the problems with the current version: Finn sees TIEs and runs back to find Rey (and the others). When he arrives at the castle Han and the other patrons just noticed the TIEs as well. The latter didn’t expect such an attack at all so their shock makes them slow to react but they are starting to realize that they have to flee. Han, Finn and Chewie on the other hand return to the castle to find Rey but instead they only find Maz who gives them the lightsaber.

That’s the thing though: Kylo’s shuttle ISN’T the first ship to leave the Finalizer, it is implied that the other ships were launched first and approached stealthily from a different direction while the shuttle approaches under the auspices of peaceful negotiation. The TIEs would still arrive first and wreak havoc as in the final film.

With this idea, I’m just reconciling the fact that the TIE fighters and landing craft seem to approach the castle low and from over the forest with the fact that in this edit, the Finalizer is almost directly overhead or at least over the lake somewhere. In every version of this edit, there is a slight continuity error because of these facts, which this idea solves.

And as I said, the current version doesn’t have any outstanding problems (apart from Finn’s line change which I assume will be in version 2), however with this idea there is no need for the patrons to flee at all, since the shuttle flanked by two tie fighters would not be seen as a hostile action.

If you’ve ever wanted to see a nascar race in SPAAAACE or a double-bladed lightsaber or a bunch of Jedis fighting at once or Yoda with a lightsaber being completely “”"""""“badass”""""""" (I can’t put enough quotes around that word) or Anakin fighting Obi-wan on a river of lava for 20 minutes…in short, if you are 12 years old…then the prequels may be worth watching even once. Perhaps then you will recognize that you didn’t want to see these things in the first place, and you could take this opportunity to appreciate the prequels for allowing you to realize what a blessing the OT really was.

Or you could just stew in your hatred and disappointment. That’s cool too.

DominicCobb said:

Well the edit doesn’t remove the main reason Finn sticks around which is that he cares about Rey and is worried with her missing that the FO has captured her. Him and Han and Chewie might not bolt for the Falcon when the whole reason they’re there is to get BB-8 safely to the Resistance (and he’s currently missing with Rey). Maz I guess would be making sure that the lightsaber makes it out of the castle in tact (and eventually to Rey). As for everyone else I think we have to assume they scramble off screen (as in the theatrical).

Very well, I can mostly buy this. I am still concerned with the rapidly closing assault force however, which is clearly on the attack.

Watching Restructured V1 again, I think I might have a solution to this whole thing without the need for the dramatic cuts that we have all been suggesting:

1: Finn sees the distant Finalizer like in the edit, but instead of TIEs and landing crafts he sees only Kylo’s shuttle (perhaps with two flanking TIE fighters) descending from the clouds.

2: Han and extras see the ships, and assume that the First Order will be negotiating for the droid, with the threat of the Finalizer so nobody attempts an escape. Finn says ‘they’ve found us’ as suggested, and assuming that they have some time, Han and Company go to find Maz (and hopefully Rey).

3: Rey talks to BB8 then notices the TIEs and landing craft overhead, and only then does the audience realize with her that the castle will be attacked. Arriving at the battle, she sees Kylo’s shuttle touch down in time with the surprise attack.

In short, everything in the scene can go as presented in V1, except that the cloud of TIEs and landing craft is now just Kylo’s shuttle.

I saw this at our local theater as well.